The present disclosure relates generally to a weld testing system and method of welding assemblies for testing spot welds.
On automotive assembly lines, much of the assembly process involves welding operations by welding assemblies using robotic welders. The welding assemblies used for resistance welding have electrode tips that are used for spot welding metal pieces together. Welding is a critical process that impacts many parts of the automobile, including the performance of the parts in the completed vehicle. The quality of each weld not only has an impact on consumer concerns such as alignment of the body parts, ride and noise, and longevity of the vehicle, but also has a direct impact on manufacturing cycle time, scrap, downtime, and overall costs.
The welding assemblies are subject to various problems that impact the quality of the weld. System parts wear out over time and in other cases, may be damaged or simply fail for a variety of reasons. As welding tips and other parts of the welding assembly wear or fail, the integrity of the weld begins to diminish. Weld inspection is performed to check the quality of the welding process for prevention and detection of weld failures prior to the vehicles leaving the assembly plant. Conventional weld inspection systems periodically check random spot welds, such as every 30th spot weld, to determine if the weld quality is maintained. However, such systems suffer from the problem that some bad welds will be missed prior to the random checking process identifying that the welding assembly is improperly working. It is impractical to check every spot weld as the testing process would slow the overall vehicle assembly time.
A need remains for a weld testing system capable of inspecting spot welds in a cost effective and reliable manner.